Write up on defining and deploying an effective legal strategy

Case study: 

LEX360 have helped multiple GCs to successfully design, document and cascade their legal strategy. The example below is ‘our methodology’ that we have used for many organisations from FTSE 100 companies to start-ups. 

Opportunity analysis 

One GC was asked by their FD to pull together a legal strategy that could be presented at the board. 

Whilst the GC had some content on their intranet and organisational charts, they had not holistically looked at their function nor captured what they stood for in a document. 

LEX360 was engaged and together we built their legal strategy and ensuing transformation programme:

The output from the opportunity analysis included:

• Agreed list of stakeholders with influence that needed to be engaged.
• Understanding the goals of the business 
• Appreciating the threats and opportunities facing the industry
• Collating the expectations of the business 
• Identifying waste in the service delivery model
• Acknowledging the lack of investment in people, process, and technology
• Providing a voice for the internal team on their pain points, aspirations, and development needs
• Defining the scope of the programme including deliverables, timeframes, change impacts assessments, and communication channels. 

Process re-engineering and technology investment 

A host of improvements were identified, and these were prioritised based on impact and effort. There were some transformational improvements (centralisation of specialism in DP, IP, Employment, Litigation and Real Estate, establishing of global legal panel and new technologies for matter and spend management) and some business-as-usual initiatives (business partner alignment, communications channels, wellbeing champions etc.) 

These improvements need to be understood from both a current and future state perspective and LEX360 uses best practice from lean enterprise to facilitate this by process mapping solutions from the customer experience perspective.  

Edward Deming the father of CI Improvement said many years ago that over 85% of the problems in any situation are attributable to the system (processes) and yet we focus on fixing the people. 

Our methodology ensures that waste in ways of working is removed where possible, accountability is understood, and any risk or other exposure is identified and escalated.

Technology can support this and one such technology that our client invested in was a matter management system. We helped them understand their needs, scope a business case, and define a shortlist of providers based on our in-depth industry knowledge.  A solution was chosen following a RFP process and we helped the client embed the solution. 

Sustainable Operations 

Legal strategy is the ‘north star’ that the legal function drives towards and the blueprint for legal for the business. Therefore, it was important for the client that we accurately documented their strategy and from this built an execution programme. Some of the tools that we used included:

• Stakeholder mapping
• PESTLE analysis (Political, Environmental, Social, Technology, Legal, Economic)
• Horizion scanning reviews.  
• MoSCoW prioritization
• 5 principles of LEAN
• Swim lane process mapping 
• Function SWOT Analysis 
• Effort v impact analysis 
• Ishikawa 
• Transformation map 

The Outcome

LEX360 was heavily involved for the first three months of the year long programme where we helped shape the strategy, the improvement programmes and delivered masterclasses on LEAN, Process and Project Management. Thereafter we supported the client periodically helping the GC and individual team members through coaching and delivery.

The quotes below are from the GC and two individuals in the team explaining the value that they got from working with LEX360:

“What started as a define the scope for legal and document the findings, became much more, it galvanised us as team identifying the purpose, the expectations and the improvements that would make us a modern legal function. Not only did LEX360 support us along the journey but they made it an inclusive and enjoyable experience”.

“I invested and grew a lot during the project, my voice was heard, my words were in the final strategy document, I own the strategy”.

“When Mo said that I should lead a project because it will make me more employable, I was sceptical, but I now know that running a complex matter management tech project gave me exposure to people and processes that I would not have encountered as an M&A lawyer. I have learnt a lot about project management, lean and have a good story to tell around complex problem solving and project ownership and delivery at my next interview”.